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#3862·Bart Vanderhaegen revised about 13 hours agoSo my criticism is that the HTV criterion is not a computational task (but a principle, universal statement) and Deutsch's criterion of understanding (you need a program) only applies to computational tasks.
With principle/ universal statement/ theory, I mean for example: for all masses, there is a force proportional to the inverse square of their distances/ for all integers, addition is commutative/ for all species, their evolution is governed by variation and selection, for all interpretations of moral actions, they are moral relativism when ... applies to that interpretation/ ....
- Principles/ universal statements/ theories are not computable because they speak about sets of (possible) transformations (not 1 in particular which would be a computation) and they offer a constraining criterion to those transformations in the set.
- Whereas a computer program is an abstraction capable of causing 1 particular transformation (between sets of inputs and sets of outputs)
There may be a way to quantify HTV, and thus deal with specific evaluations of how HTV of one theory is higher than another. That would be a computational task. But that is different from the criterion for HTV (which is by definition not computable). And having no program for that computational task does not imply that the criterion for HTV is irrelevant or not usable, or even fluff.
Compare for example to the theory of evolution: the theory of "variation and selection" is the criterion for a set of allowable transformations (of species), but not having a specific program (e.g. for how a particular species can evolve in some particular niche) does not imply that the criterion is useless or fluff.
I think the usefulness of the HTV criterion becomes clear when you link it to Constructor Theory, then one can argue that HTV criterion adds more than criticisms alone can do. But that's a whole other story we could get into.
HTV isn’t a principle even by your own definition. What on earth are you talking about man.
Even if HTV itself is not a computational task, the decision-making method Deutsch proposes is one, and it depends on HTV. But even if we sidestep that issue and outsource HTV completely to the user, we still run into all kinds of issues. This has all been addressed. No fancy talk about sets or constraints is going to change that.
You previously claimed you’re an engineer. I don’t think you are. You just pasted some code that was clearly written by AI and didn’t even compile, twice.
You talk about ‘sets’ and ‘constraints’ and ‘computations’ but I don’t think you understand any of them. No offense but I think those concepts are all distractions so you don’t need to actually address HTV. That’s why you need to use those big words.
Discussing with you is a waste of time. Again, no offense but I don’t think you’re qualified to weigh in on this discussion. Prove me wrong and submit working, handwritten code for HTV or Deutsch’s decision-making method. I’ll delete any further comments from you in this discussion that don’t contain working code. If you keep commenting anyway, I’ll lock your account.